'Masters of Sex': Showtime dramatizes researchers Masters and Johnson

The most scandalous takeaway from "Masters of Sex," the Showtime drama series about famed sex researchers Masters and Johnson, is how little Americans knew about sex in the early 1950s.

Not only was Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex ..." decades away, there was no go-to reference book like "The Joy of Sex" (1972), let alone "Our Bodies, Ourselves" (1973).

Sure, Americans trusted Dr. Spock to tell them how to raise babies, but they had little information about what was involved in actually making them. There was no omnipresent Dr. Ruth Westheimer to answer embarrassing questions.

How could Americans possibly know about sex in the Eisenhower era? There was no cable TV!

Masters and Johnson taught America the secrets of the bedroom.

The engrossing, beautifully cast and well acted "Masters of Sex" is at once the tale of an odd couple and the story of a culture coming of age.

"Masters of Sex" premieres Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. on Showtime. Michael Sheen turns in a breathtaking performance as steely, tightly-wound Masters; Caplan is credible and stunning in period wardrobe as adventuresome Johnson.

It's about sex, and there's plenty of R-rated on-camera evidence (sometimes in the name of "research"). But the drama is more subtly about all sorts of awakenings. The awakening of what was then called "women's doctors" to matters of female physiology beyond obstetrics, the awakening of the medical profession overall to the idea of studying human sexual response, the awakening of women to all sorts of possibilities.

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The story begins pre-sexual revolution, when only prostitutes could be expected to know anything about sex in the service of anything other than procreation, when infertility was assumed to be the biggest personal failing a wife could suffer.

The odd couple who became a team were a curious, long-running study in mismatched powers. Dr. William Masters, a cold, brilliant, sexually and emotionally repressed (married) physician was a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis. Virginia Johnson, a warm, forward-thinking, sexually adventuresome (divorced) woman employed first as his secretary, later required to be his sex partner and eventually rising to the level of professional partner, although without medical credentials.

A high-spirited young woman, Virginia ( Lizzy Caplan) has unconventional feelings about sex and female equality — she refuses to be embarrassed about sex and sexuality. She knows how to talk to people in a way Bill ( Michael Sheen), the egotistical, strictly rational man of science, cannot.

The film is faithful to the excellent biography of the same title by Thomas Maier. Both give significant focus to the power differential between him and her, a now shocking aspect that was not so unusual in this time and place.

Ginny Johnson was in fact required to engage in sex with her boss, Bill Masters, if she wanted to keep her job. The fact that she was a single mother and needed the income, combined with her significant ambition, led her to agree. Together they not only spent hours observing thousands of sexual encounters between volunteer subjects, but pursued their own intimate research as well.

Their relationship is intriguing, but ultimately it's the least important aspect of the story.

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